Advent Year A

I had avoided starting an Advent discipline; I thought maybe doing some writing every day, or some sort of music-related thing, might be useful reflection. Then I realised that it would just be one more thing for me to be perfectionist about, and that maybe "getting through Advent" is discipline enough for those of us with responsibility for leading others in worship.

These last few weeks I've been leaning heavily on friends, getting lots of hugs online and in person, being listened to patiently by people who really are rather too busy but manage to make the time anyway. The message that has been coming through is that the care and support that pulled me out of the pit last time are still there.

The last few days I've also been e-mailing one friend in particular, not with my usual meandering e-mails full of the adventures of the day with added musings, but even longer letters full of rather a lot of analysis, comparing my last serious depressive episode with how I'm feeling now. She's sparing with her advice but has had some useful insights.

I could spend several hours and many paragraphs explaining how I've come to this conclusion, but I think I do need the structure of some sort of Advent discipline right now, and I think it needs to be something gratitude-based. Not to beat myself over the head with my many blessings, and not to ignore or discount the mess the world seems to be in and the huge amount of work ahead to make God's kingdom known, but to hone my perception of God in everyday life.

I don't want to make this too complicated or too rigid so I am going to go with a daily gratitude list and try not to sweat too much if I miss a day.

1) I am grateful for the green tomato chutney I just ate with cheese and crackers. I made this earlier this year out of tomatoes from the garden -- we had a bumper crop and couldn't manage to eat them all fresh.
2) I am grateful for the group I performed with this evening, who have in their way become a big part of my life over the last couple of years.
3) I am grateful for the care and attention immediately directed my way when I started to talk about low mood or depression or whatever this current dark cloud is.
4) I am grateful for all the care and attention that people normally show me, when I'm not in crisis management mode and nothing is "wrong" but things are just ticking over. Even if I can't see it, or don't normally notice it... right now I assert that I believe it is there.
5) I am grateful for the heated underblanket in my bed. I have trouble not seeing this as extravagant and wasteful, to be honest, but in the cooler weather we've had recently and with the lack of insulation in the home we rent, being able to climb into a warmed-up bed and let the muscles in my back relax properly is a huge help.

And it is late, and I am tired, and that underblanket is sounding mighty good about now so I will stop there.

On her kindness

I've had a bad cold this week, nothing serious, but enough to slow me down.

I've been feeling shaky mentally for a while now. Nothing drastic, but enough to slow me down. I'm in a foul mood more often than I like, being avoidant even about activities I love, increasingly unable to imagine enjoying things, my sense of perspective is a bit all over the place and I am wondering if it is time to start with the dried frog pills again -- not to drug myself out of my sense of dissatisfaction, not to medicalize a perfectly reasonable response to an uncontrollable and dangerous world, but to correct or ease or change whatever chemical or structural characteristic makes my fears so overwhelming that I resort to avoidance, displacement, or numbness.

The thing is, I don't really believe it was the antidepressants or the three and a half years of therapy that got me out of this last time. I think it was the continual reassurance of other people caring for me, doing their best to help me despite the difficulties (and I know I did make it difficult, for it was so hard for me to trust), making it clear that even if I don't understand why, I am valued and cherished and loved.

That support has not been withdrawn. On the contrary, it is very real and very ongoing. If you are reading this and you are someone who knows me, please do not think I don't notice that you care. I do notice, and I am grateful, but sometimes it's still hard for it to have any effect. It's as if another layer has been peeled away, and the fears that disabled me in years past have been replaced by some newer ones and some older ones, and suddenly my need to understand why I am loved -- so that I can keep doing whatever it is, you see, and so control my fate -- outweighs my ability to accept love I do not think I deserve. And the messages that I don't deserve love echo from a church that systematically excludes me and my loved ones and a society that makes it clear that the poor are to be discarded, right back into childhood fears of violence and abandonment. My ability to see myself as a beloved child of God disappears in a puff of Pelagianism. My ability to trust God to love me even though I am decidedly imperfect evaporates. I don't understand, and I can't trust, and so I am afraid. But I also have this desperate desire to improve things, to act on behalf of God in the world, to heal the sick and bind up the brokenhearted and all that priestly stuff from Isaiah. Christ has no body now on earth but ours, said Teresa of Avila, and I want to be the hands, the feet, the eyes -- even while I cannot imagine I will ever be anything but dust, not loved, not hated, not even noticed. And the danger of that is that without the sense of belovedness, without the knowledge that I am valued and cherished and loved, all my works are forced and manipulative rather than joyful. I will not be able to refill the well from which I draw water, and eventually I will be too tired and dried out to continue being unkind to myself while I try to serve others and will lapse into apathy or selfishness or despair. I know this is how it goes. I've been here before. It's not kenosis, a joyful self-emptying, a costly but beneficial surrender... it's sort of the opposite of that. But I don't know what else to do, I don't seem to have any control over my sense of being loved, and so I keep going through the motions, hoping beyond hope that if I keep going the doldrums will clear, waiting and watching for some subtle shift in perspective and meanwhile struggling against my instinct to withdraw, hide, hibernate, conserve what I think I have left -- as if any of it is mine.

I am already weary, already thirsty. I keep saying, on Twitter and a few other places, that I know this will pass, winter is always a bit difficult, I know I will be okay. But what I need to remember is not just that I will be okay but that I am already more than okay, that I am already valued and cherished and loved, and this is not contingent on anything I say or do or think or believe. I need to remember how to be kind to myself while being kind to others, I need to remember how to accept the kindnesses others offer.

Only say the word, and I shall be healed...

Fit for purpose?

Morning Prayer -- 5 days out of 5 this week. No, it isn't about the numbers... but setting a time, having a structure, seems to be helpful. Structured prayer doesn't confine my prayer to the limits of the structure but it does ensure that some prayer happens.

In addition to the thinking I've been doing about vocation or purpose, I'm struggling a little with a general mental malaise or low mood. I don't think it's a reaction to the things I've been thinking about or coming to recognise, though of course it could be; it doesn't feel like that kind of emotional response. I think it's much simpler. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and some years it's worse than others. I'm using my lightbox, and that's helping, but I still feel low.

As anyone who's had a major mental illness would be, I'm rather frightened that this mild low patch will develop into full-blown, whimpering-under-the-duvet depression.

I know that I have much better external support now than I did last time.

I know that I have much better mental tools now than I did last time.

I know that over three years of therapy did help heal a lot of the things that made my previous experience so debilitating.

I know that I don't react badly to some of the dried frog pills and that medication, though inconvenient, is an option.

I know that I'm aware of this and in a much better position to do something about it than I once was.

And I know that there is a chance that even if I do all I can, I will still get very ill.

And that's scary, because even the work I'm doing now -- which I love -- will fall apart if I get too sick to do it.

So I find my prayer this week sliding from "Please tell me what You want me to do" to "Please let me remain well enough to do it..."

I keep using the lightbox, I keep practising, I try not to sweat the small mistakes while allowing myself to focus on the small pleasures. I ask friends, loved ones, for help and company, I try to pace myself in terms of what I take on, and I reframe, reframe, reframe every all-or-nothing, black-and-white condemnation of myself or the world that my maladapted lizard brain tries to throw at me, trying always to turn toward what is good, turn toward what is God, the ground of all being, wanting to believe that love is stronger than this greyness.

Turn us again, O God of hosts; •
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
from Psalm 80

On Fear

FranIAm made a post on fear in which she asked us to discuss our own fears.

My comment was long. I don't know whether I like it or hate it, but it seems significant enough to post here.

Fran, thank you for this post, and for being so open about your own fears.

Money fears get to me, too, more than I'd like. At the moment I mostly deal with them by being very avoidant about money; I'm a bit of a spendthrift, I have debt that has piled up while I've been a student (though not as much as some, because I've been able to continue working), I tell myself that my studies are more important and I'll deal with the money stuff afterward. Afterward is starting to get awfully close and I suspect it is not going to be pretty! In the long run I know I have to grow up about this a bit.

The money issues, for me, are about scarcity of resources; having enough to survive. Another area where these fears are apparent is in my relationship with food: again, I'm worried about not having enough. I mostly manage not to overeat too badly, but one only has to glance at my cupboards to realise that I'm a champion hoarder. I probably have enough non-perishable food to get through a month, and that's not through any systematic effort. Empty shelves make me physically uncomfortable.

I can look back to childhood experiences for those manifestations of scarcity thinking. It's fairly obvious where and how I picked up the habits. But these worries about the scarcity of external resources are really only scratching the surface of my fears. Underneath there is a deeper concern: the fear that, somehow, I am Not Good Enough. Not Good Enough that people who claim to care for me would look after my physical needs if I were unable to do so for myself; Not Good Enough to be helped back up if I fall, comforted if I am in pain, held if I'm lonely, loved. It's not that I fear not being loved, so much as being, ultimately, unlovable.

Thankfully I have plenty of evidence that this is not the case, but it still frightens me. And it's still a strong enough possibility in my mind that I sometimes get spooked and think that those who have power over my life might take a dislike to me and actively try to hurt me. Male authority figures who are taller than me are the most terrifying; after five years I still feel incredibly anxious every time I have to meet with a certain person at Academic Institution, even though he has shown himself to be of good will. And one of the reasons I feel so comfortable at Leafy Suburb Church is definitely that the priest and deacon are both female. Working with conductors is also difficult, and though I manage this relatively well I feel far more stress with a man up there waving the stick around than I do with a woman. Again, this is traceable to specific childhood experiences.

The result of all this is a grasping after control. It's ultimately futile, but my full cupboards are a vain attempt at having control over my food supply; so is much of my interest in gardening and foraging, though those have also brought me great joy. I fear my physical disabilities not so much because it is likely I will end up with much more severe chronic pain than I have now, but because I am terrified that I will lose the ability to do enough work to look after myself. I have in the past been extremely clingy and co-dependent in relationships, bending over backward to please a partner and expecting that they do the same for me and then being devastated when they won't or simply can't. I have been extremely intolerant of other people's failings when they have let me down, and even more intolerant of my own failure to keep everyone happy--which is pretty much impossible, as any fule kno.

I do better now, I think. I'm certainly much happier, and certainly less ruled by fear. There are a number of reasons for this. One is just that three years of therapy taught me a lot about re-framing, and I don't interpret so much of the world from the assumption that people hurt me on purpose. I've learned that what people want to do and what they would like to do are often separate, that nobody has enough information to do the right thing all the time, and that most people have no more ill will toward me than I have toward them. There was a period of time when I knew this on an intellectual level but could not grasp it on an emotional one, and that was a very difficult stretch, but being as objective as possible did help me to become less afraid. It's really not all about me and my fear, despite the increasing length of this comment on said subject.

Another reason I am less afraid is because I do actually have more control over my life now than I did. I've had diagnosis of two long-term conditions, both of which were affecting me hugely in ways which were not taken seriously by others. Neither of these are likely to ever be cured, but both of them have options for management which reduce my difficulties, and as I learn more about how these conditions affect me and what works for me and what does not, I gain even more control. It's been a hard shift, going from having a goal of running the London Marathon to having a goal of staying off prescription painkillers until I'm 40, but that's a world and a half better than being in pain all the time and not having any clue what was going on and being told it was all in my head. Now I'm in pain about half the time and can make good decisions about whether to medicate or rest. (The physiology of pain is an interesting side-note here, too; chronic pain can really, REALLY mess with brain chemistry. It certainly has an effect on my mood, though my pain tolerance is relatively high in terms of ability to function physically despite pain.) And I'm getting more skilled at managing the other perils and dangers of this earthly life, and more confident that if everything goes wrong I will still be able to feed myself.

Another reason I am not as fearful as I once was is because, for whatever reason, some people saw fit to help me. And they kept trying, and kept trying, and kept trying even when I was really rather horrible to them, and somehow eventually I was able to see it, and believe that maybe, just maybe, if these rather wonderful people cared enough to love me, I might be lovable after all, or at least not abhorrent. There is one person in particular in the last few years who was a huge support to me; I've not worked out whether her effect on my life is because she happened to be there at the right time and I was ready for those changes or if her particular capacity to love was different enough from my previous experience to get through to me. It may be some combination of both, I'll probably never be able to figure it out. But now that I have that hope to cling to I look back and see that actually, many others have helped me, cared for me, loved me even when it has been hard for them. They far outweigh and outnumber those who have hurt me, either through incompetence or through lashing out in fear and pain themselves. They even outweigh those who might have been truly sadistic (though the more I think about it the more I think those were just very, very fearful people, acting the only way they knew how). And realising that and allowing myself to feel loved and risk loving has opened the floodgates, and suddenly I love more than I fear. The flailings and thrashings of people who are frightened do make me sad but they don't hurt me as much as they did, because I know they are hurting so very much more and I just want to show them that they are loved, intrinsically lovable children of God. I want to sow harmony where there is discord, I want to sow hope where there is despair, I want to sow joy where there is sadness, healing where there is injury, all that other stuff from the prayer of St Francis of Assisi. There doesn't seem to be any other sensible response to the depth of love that I have felt, even if sometimes it seems like a distant glimmer, even if sometimes I feel alone and frightened.

I have limited energy and limited time and have to pick my battles to an extent, but I think maybe that's what discernment is about. Not about what to do--what to do is to spread love and hope in the world--but about how to go about doing so.

The word verification is "twament". I'll probably have to re-post because I spent so long writing this, though. (Yeah, I did. Second word verification is "insts", which isn't nearly as good.)

That's where the comment ends, but I should add a few things:

Those of you who know me well will be able to read between the lines on some of that. Please respect my desire for anonymity in this forum.

Some of this makes it sound as if I'm never afraid, never act badly out of fear, am always able to somehow get above scarcity thinking. That is not the case at all! But I've gone from my fears being so overwhelming it was hard for me to get dressed in the morning to being able to participate in life to a much fuller extent, to being able to engage with my fears on a more meaningful level than just hiding under the duvet. I may only just pass as 'normal' but it's a huge change for me. And for me, whether I'm able to function seems to have a lot to do with how I relate to fear, and how I relate to fear seems to be directly affected by whether I feel loved and lovable. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

There may be another post on fear, language and scripture at some point. Or there may not. I'm meant to be doing a degree...

And after the fire

Evensong on Sunday was wonderful. Not just because I got to see Deacon Friend, which always makes me pretty happy, but because the sermon she gave seemed so relevant. I hadn't heard her preach before, and didn't realise she was going to be speaking last night. I'm very glad I made the journey to Leafy Suburb Church, even though it meant I got home late.

That marks six weeks and counting of going to church every Sunday. A year ago you'd never have convinced me this would happen, even if most of the services have been Evensong. I've changed such a lot in a year. It's appropriate, then, that the subject of the sermon was transformation.

A few things stood out for me. One was the acknowledgment that being open to God and to the possibility of transformation can be a frightening thing; changes in ourselves and in others can be scary, especially when we don't yet understand what's going on. I've certainly felt that in my own life and I don't really know how to deal with it, though I think I'm improving in some respects.

Fear is a very powerful thing, perhaps the closest thing to evil that I can bring myself to believe in. Much of my depression, I think, was related to how I responded to fear. I allowed it to rule my life. My comfort zones got smaller and smaller as I shied away from any discomfort or uncertainty, and the fear only got bigger. Eventually I was so tired of being scared that it just wasn't worth it to try any more. Retreat and withdrawal seemed like the only options.

I still get scared. I've always been cautious, easily frightened, perhaps more sensitive than I should be to life's lack of stability and consistency. I can't say what changed, exactly, and I can't point to all of how it changed, but my response to fear is different now than it used to be. Oh, I still have days where I hide under the duvet, unwilling to cope with life, but I choose them strategically now, and they don't spiral out of control. I still get discouraged, but somewhere along the line I learned to hope that tomorrow will be better, to let myself believe that things might improve. I still get frightened, especially when my mental state has been patchy for a while, but having experienced recovery once I know it's possible to experience it again, and that helps a lot. I haven't become an optimist, exactly, but I'm a lot less likely now to write off the world just because it is sometimes terrifying.

That's a pretty powerful transformation, at least from my perspective, and I don't really know how it happened. I can point to lots of little things, but adding them up doesn't seem to balance with the sort of change I've felt.

Which brings me to another point from last night's sermon: that transformation can happen on many levels. Sometimes learning a new perspective sheds new light on a subject and our thinking is transformed. I am blessed to see this in my teaching work: a student understands something and the light goes on, and in that instant they are transformed by delight. Other times transformation can be more profound: someone who has recovered from a serious illness or addiction can seem like a completely different person afterward. That sort of caterpillar-into-butterfly metamorphosis can be frightening to watch and frightening to undergo because it is so far-reaching. It has the potential to be extremely disruptive. But it can be a wonderful, inspiring thing to witness.

DF said in her sermon that the transformation Christians seek is to become more Christ-like: more loving, more merciful, more just, more compassionate, more encouraging, more faithful. If that's what Christianity is all about then sign me up! I'm not sure that isn't what most religion is about, though. I think Karen Armstrong might point out that increasing compassion is a major component of at least the three Abrahamic faiths as they are today, as well as that of several Eastern religions. But I digress. The point was that the sort of transformation Christians seek is to become more Christ-like, and that can be inconvenient, uncomfortable, frightening, disruptive. It changes lives.

And it's contagious. In loving others more fully, in forgiving those who harm us, in seeking to meet the needs of those less fortunate than ourselves, in encouraging those who struggle, in consoling the unhappy and fighting for the justice of the oppressed, what we do is teach people, by powerful example, that they are loved, they are worthwhile, they are valued. When they learn this they will often turn around and try to do the same for others. When they see that it is through God's grace that kindness has been done to them, they will seek God's grace themselves. And we don't have to say a word about it, we don't have to tell them how it's done, we don't have to push them to accept anything that's hard for them to believe, we just have to take loving, kind action. That's my understanding of what she was saying, anyway.

That has certainly been my experience with a number of people. Appropriately, DF is one example of someone who has been hugely influential in my own spiritual searching, despite--or perhaps because of--her complete acceptance of where I am now and her steadfast refusal to push her own belief system on anyone else. She helped me, a lot, when I most needed it and when she could have just walked away. I've seen her do the same or similar for many other people. Her capacity for loving, kind action astounds me. It has long been clear to me that her kindness to others is a result of her own relationship with God. I see the way she treats others, her commitment to the wellbeing of everyone she meets, and I am inspired. I want to live that way. And if her way of life is a result of a relationship with God, then I need to cultivate a relationship with God. And so here I am, cultivating that relationship with the aim of augmenting compassion, in the ways that I know how: reading scripture, praying daily, going to church of all things, and she didn't have to say a word. She didn't bother telling me the word, she just got on with living it as best she could.

That leads to the third point of her sermon, one that is perhaps most difficult for me. It was a suggestion of silence as a valuable means of seeking such transformation. I don't doubt that it's useful. I don't doubt that most of us, in this busy, noisy world, need more time for contemplation, more silence and stillness in our lives. But stillness and silence have never come easily to me. The closest I come to having a mind free of scampering, skittering thoughts is when I am playing or singing music, which is hardly something that counts as silence. My head is full of words and sounds and pictures, and all my efforts to clear it have failed; the best I seem to be able to do is to fill it with words, sounds and pictures that inspire and encourage me rather than cause me to feel desolation and despair. I don't know if silent contemplation or meditation would be transformative for me: I never get that far. The closest I get is in song.

So which hymn did we sing? This one, of course:

Jesus, these eyes have never seen
that radiant form of thine;
the veil of sense hangs dark between
thy blessèd face and mine.

I see thee not, I hear thee not,
yet art thou oft with me;
and earth hath ne'er so dear a spot
as where I meet with thee.

Yet, though I have not see, and still
must rest in faith alone;
I love thee, dearest Lord, and will,
unseen but not unknown.

When death these mortal eyes shall seal,
and still this throbbing heart,
the rending veil shall thee reveal
all glorious as thou art.

The veil of sense hangs dark between thy blessed face and mine. That sounds about right for my incessant attempts to make logical sense of something I actually believe to be ineffable. I really want to understand this... I really want to understand how Jesus fits into this world, this life, my life. It's proving difficult. The Trinity is not an easy concept for a rationalist like myself, and all I get from reading everyone from Tom Wright to Paul M Collins to Karen Armstrong is that some very influential Christians also don't think it's an easy concept... but while it doesn't make sense to me, thinking about God in Trinitarian terms gets in the way of thinking about God in terms of what I should do next. Veil of sense indeed! At the moment the only time I believe in a triune God is when I'm singing about it. The rest of the time, my concept of God is one of overwhelming unity and interconnectedness, of infinite wholeness.

I will give more thought to silence. I will keep trying. But in the meantime, I'm going to keep singing.